President Obama's dilemma

President Barack Obama dispatched Mitt Romney a little more than a month ago but now faces an unpredictable new threat: a deeply divided House GOP that doesn’t even seem capable of bargaining with him.

Boehner: Plan B failed because of fear of raising taxes

Fiscal cliff: A primer

Obama had hoped the election would unclog the works in Washington. His aides often speculated that he’d be freer to negotiate because he didn’t have to run again — and Republicans didn’t have to run against him.

But Thursday’s revolt was a grim reminder of how closely Obama’s future is tethered to that of his political rivals.

If House Speaker John Boehner can’t muscle his own bill through the House, his power to persuade his colleagues to accept a deal with the White House appears greatly diminished. And that means it might be tough for Obama to forge any agreement with House Republicans to avert the fiscal cliff this year — or to push through his second-term agenda in the years to come.

The path forward looked unclear even to senior administration officials late Thursday.

Aides had thought the House wrangling would stretch past midnight, so many had left the White House early in the evening — only to see Boehner pull the bill from floor at 8 p.m., much sooner than expected. They took it as a sign that Boehner wasn’t even close.

Obama press secretary Jay Carney released a purposefully restrained statement — a shift after days of senior administration officials accusing Boehner of strategic incompetence and political cowardice. The president will work with Congress, Carney said, to find a bipartisan solution.

But by the time Carney responded, Boehner had already signaled that he had no intention of returning to the bargaining table with Obama. After his own strategy backfired, Boehner said in a statement that Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) needed to come up with a solution — not exactly the message that the White House was hoping to hear.

Not to worry, this is exactly what Obama wants - taxes to increase on everyone. And, for some strange reason, no one seems to recognize this. John Boehner's last proposal is almost word for word what Nancy Pelosi proposed in May. And has virtually no spending cuts.

As for those gerrymandered districts - I live in Florida. FL-3, Corrine Brown, snakes from Jacksonville over to Gainesville and almost down to Orlando.

Our family prepared for this back in 2008 - 2009 knowing Obama would tax American families into the Poor House, and tens of millions of families are in the Poor House these days. Most tragic, tens of millions of American children are slowly starving to death while Michelle Obama gets fatter and fatter.

We cashed out almost all of our investment vehicles and retirement funds, even took some tax hits for early withdrawal. Our family smartly moved our assets and real properties into our daughter's ownership to avoid an estate tax which we knew Obama would bring back. In essence, we have reduced our earned income level to below or at a minimum tax liability trigger level.

All our lives, our girl's daddy and me worked our fingers to the bone to be successful and secure in life. We are not about to allow a Marxist socialist to come along to take away our life savings to give to left liberal welfare loafers.

When Obama is out of office and if reasonable and sensible tax policies are effected again, we will return to earning money. Until then, we not allowing foodstamp Obama to steal away our girl's future.

I understand a gallon of milk will cost six to eight dollars early next year, no telling how high Obama will jack up gasoline prices. He is certainly bent on forcing every American family into poverty.

Empty pocketbooks, loss of jobs and loss of homes, will have Democrats and left liberals regret voting for Obama, well, except for those who love living a lifestyle of foodstamps and welfare checks, at the expense of taxpaying American families.

wingers can spin this BS anyway they want to. what is clear is that boehner is a feckless speaker who can't lead his caucus- plain & simple. he didn't want to bring the senate bill up ccuase he knows he won't get a majority among republicans to support it. well he can't get a majority of republicans to support his plan B either.

what he can perhaps do is cobble together enough house republicans, something near thirty of'em, to vote with dems passing the senate bill. which ensures 98% of americans, 97% of small businesses don't see a tax increase. it's that or we go over the cliff full monty style.

DOW futures were down 174 points when i woke- they're down 200 points at this post. foreign markets trend is DOWN.

Is this Speaker Boehner's idea of responsible leadership? Why should his Republican caucus have approved his Plan B? They knew it wasn't going anywhere, that it was all for show. I understand that Boehner felt that if he could bring this plan back to Pres Obama with the approval of his caucus, he would be in a stronger position to then demand even more concessions from Pres Obama.

Now that this scenario has gone terribly wrong for the Speaker, what does he do? Does he try to work with Pres Obama again? What would be the point? If he couldn't even get his people to go along with this admittedly sham plan, just so he could get a bit of leverage, how will he ever get them to agree to anything at all? One of his recalcitrant Republicans (one of those kicked out of his committee seat, I believe) even said that he would insist that the Pres restore all the Bush tax cuts. Can you believe that? Who are these people? The Republican party seems to have been hijacked by the Tea Party extremists. They seem to care less about the consequences of their intractibility.

The only thing Boehner can do now, is to maybe pull all the more moderate Republicans together, combine their votes with the Democrats to try to get a deal done and avoid the "fiscal cliff". This doesn't seem likely as he and Cantor have seemingly thrown all their toys on the floor and are refusing to play anymore.

There will be no meeting with the President until after Christmas. And Boehner considers himself the adult in the room? What a laugh!!!.

President Obama should have learned by now the Republicans are the radicalized protectors and coddlers of the richest citizens and corporations and a reasonable, balanced approach of raised revenues and spending cuts is going to be eschewed by them, despite the fact that the country voted for that approach by voting President Obama back into the Oval Office.

President Obama's biggest threat is now being seen as one of them by his own base. Raised tax hikes on all making over $250,000 goes into effect immediately January 1, 2013. All our president has to do is wait another eleven days and he keeps his central campaign promise to return rates on those making over $250,000 a year back to the 39.6% rate of Clinton. He needs to do that. The last thing he needs is to be seen (again) as caving to the country-damaging demands of Republicans (plutocrats in democratic clothing). The outrageous, absolutely unreasonable demands of Republicans that we shred our social safety net or borrow from China to finance more big tax cuts for those who don't need them at all, those so rich they wouldn't notice the tax hike at all, should be avoided by our president if he wants to avoid being seen as one of them, as unreasonable as the most radical Republicans.

It is not being reasonable to meet utterly unreasonable demands halfway, which if Carney represents the views of our president faithfully, is what President Obama seems to think. Meeting utterly unreasonable demands halfway is caving and selling out reason to join the utterly irrational and unreasonable.

President Obama needs to keeps his eyes on the target of raising needed revenues from those it wouldn't hurt and finding savings in Medicare (e.g., power returned to the government to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical behemoths) Social Security (means testing, etcetera) and not give in to the Republican Way that has gotten our country in the economic mess it's in.

Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Obama had total control of the House, Senate, and White House for the majority of Obama's presidency. Why did Obama wait until the Mayan calendar ran out to address his dilemma? Is it true that when BUSH'S TAX CUTS RUN OUT everyone's taxes will go sky high because of Obama?

the president has proven his depth to which he'd seek to negotiate and by doing so he has angered many on the left. he knows that. he's proven again the intransigence of house republicans who refuse to put anything before party & ideology.

boehner can either bring up the senate bill, providing some level of certainty to the average joe & jane and small businesses or he can jump with the rest of us.

american taxes are the lowest they have been in 65 years. almost the lowest ever. and obama plans lower working families taxes lower again. it is the GOP Which is both raising workers'taxes and cutting back government services to workers' families. it is the GOP which off shored our jobs and the GOP which crashed the economy.

Is it true that when BUSH'S TAX CUTS RUN OUT everyone's taxes will go sky high because of Obama?

Good morning, Sunshine!

Well, you certainly could argue that the BUSH TAX CUTS RUN OUT because when the Republicans passed them they made them temporary.

And you could argue that since Boehner can't even get a bill passed that keeps higher rates for those making over a million a year that it's the fault of Republican intransigence and unwillingness to compromise.

But see, that's merely reality, and everyone knows reality has a liberal bias. That's why my good friend AngelEyez chooses NEVER to credit reality in his posts.

The White House’s best hope is that Boehner takes a drastically different course and breaks with his own allies. He could decide to negotiate the best bipartisan package possible and put it on the floor with unanimous Democratic support and the backing of Republicans who want to avoid the cliff.

But there’s little expectation that he’ll go that route and weaken his already shaky hold on the speakership.

See, this is what I mean about reality having a liberal bias.

Okay, sure, it's true that historically, nearly all major legislation passed only with bipartisan majorities. For example the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was supported by all Democrats EXCEPT those from the South - which at that time was a large block. It was also vehemently opposed by Western Republicans led by Barry Goldwater. Johnson began a very public campaign of urging midwestern and northeastern Republicans, as members of the party of Lincoln, to pass the bill in Linoln's honor. Persuaded by polls showing the public wanted the bill, it was passed over the objections of Southern Democrats and Western Republicans.

So see, reality resulted in a liberal bill. Boehner simply can't allow that to happen.